John McCain quipped yesterday that Barack Obama is “running for Jimmy Carter’s second term.” I can’t imagine that most people under the age of 40 are old enough to remember what Carter’s first term was like. It was done 28 years ago. For my kids, it’s as vivid as Calvin Coolidge’s first term.

Tomorrow’s NYT has an interesting story on the unprecedented financial straits in which Hillary Clinton ended her presidential campaign. Michael Luo suggests that even if Barack Obama is willing to try to put his own fundraising machinery to work on her behalf, it might not be so easy:

Last week, I wrote a piece bemoaning the political ramifications of my own email inbox, where BlackBerry politics happens. Some readers noted that it might be nice to know more about the silly rapid-fire give and take that takes place behind the scenes, as campaigns and parties try to spin reporters via mass email.

If this Barna poll of Evangelicals* is right, McCain has a LOT of work to do. From the poll’s synopsis:

1. Among likely voters, Sen. Obama holds a 50% to 35% lead over Sen. McCain.
2. There are relatively few undecided voters – just 15% of the registered voters who are likely to vote have not yet chosen a candidate to support. For Sen. …

It’s an unseasonably hot June in Washington — today could go over 100 degrees the weatherman says. The heat wave is probably not directly linked to global warming but in case anyone was wondering about what happened to the Lieberman/Warner bill I posted about last week, my colleague Eric Pooley has this great wrap up on the bill’s …

The McCain campaign got back to me on McCain’s FISA position and, putting it succinctly as possible, a staffer says this: First, current legislation is unclear about whether or not the President has the authority to execute warantless wiretaps. In absence of clear legislation, they argue, the president retains the authority. (Sort of an …

McCain’s recent statements about warantless wiretapping and FISA have not clarified the seemingly contradictory messages that came out last week. (The Greenwald has a typically exhaustive run-down on the back and forth here.) In 2006, he was definitive (ish):

WALLACE: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to …

But not of Barack Obama. (ADD: there is a hateful piece of garbage on Youtube)–which revisits, in its last minute, the same slanderous nonsense about John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war that the Bush campaign helped spread through South Carolina in 2000. It wouldn’t be worth commenting on but for the provenance. It was made, …